Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Not Aging Well


Some things get better with time. Certain cheeses, wine from what I hear, even an aged steak will make your taste buds stand up and take notice. The older something is, chances are time has increased its value, unless we’re talking about the last thirty years where everything was either made in China or bought at Ikea; those things don’t retain value, never mind an increase in value.

For someone under twenty, thirty years might seem like a lifetime, ancient even, but I’m talking about really old things, like an 1800’s carved mahogany writing desk with clawed feet and pearl inlay, painstakingly hand-tooled by men of a time when such craftsmanship was admired and aspired to.

One of those masterpieces will set you back a pretty penny today, and even with the onset of furniture you assemble at home then brag about how you did it all by your lonesome, some appreciate the detail, the work, the patina, the history, and everything else that Ikea can never replicate.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, some things do not age well, and it doesn’t take long for them to spoil, go bad, become worthless, or be proven fallacious. The list of things that don’t age well or that time is not kind to be far longer than that of things that get better with time. From that new car that just lost 30% of its value once you drove it off the lot, or those nifty bellbottom pants that you were sure would never go out of style, to disco music, leeching, crinoline dresses, powdered wigs, the list is inexhaustible. The thing about time is that it proves things out. Some things stand the test of time; others crumble into dust.

This is doubly true for predictions, whether they are of a certain date, like all the hubbub over Y2K, or Harold Camping’s ill-fated insistence that April of 2011 is when we should all stop paying our bills because come the month of May we would be feasting at the banquet in the sky, or of a certain imminent event like, I don’t know, off the top of my head, World War III.

I hate beating a dead horse as much as the next guy, but this particular one needs a few extra whacks for posterity if for nothing else. It’s been less than a week since we were all supposed to lock ourselves in our bunkers and dive headfirst into a bucket of potatoes au gratin compliments of the Jim Baker show. This was it! The end was here, and at best, we had time to kiss our loved ones goodbye and see one last sunset without the backdrop of a mushroom cloud.

It used to be that when an individual predicted something of this magnitude and time proved that it was either wishful thinking or something wholly of the flesh without an ounce of divine revelation, they’d slink away for a few years, lick their wounds, hopefully repent, spend some serious time in prayer and seeking the face of God, then return to the public arena.

Nowadays, someone can be wrong today, not apologize for scaring people into heart murmurs, not acknowledge they were wrong, then come out with another apocalyptic, extinction-level prediction for tomorrow. Even though they sometimes preface what they say with I feel, or I believe, or I think I heard from the Lord, they are bolstered in their foolishness by a handful of others whom I’ve dubbed the I bear witness choir. You know, every time someone ‘has a word,’ they’re the first to bear witness, no matter how outlandish the word might be.

Either it’s from the Lord, or it’s your opinion, and if you say it’s the Lord, it better be. How will we know? Time. Time will reveal the truth of the matter more thoroughly than anything else because if you tell me the Lord told you we’d be glowing in the dark from nuclear fallout by mid-January and now I have to scramble to find a Valentine’s day present for my wife because it didn’t happen, allow me to either call you a liar to your face or declare that you did not hear from the Lord. 

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.

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